The Master Builders

Timewatch • Season 5 • Episode 3

About this episode

Three films presented from the British Museum reveal how visionaries and others dealt with the 'outsider' as they set out to perfect a society, a state and a national image at the turn of the 19th century. Film 1: English reformers constructed a new prison system - only to find that within 20 years it was a total failure. Film 2: The Brothers Grimm falsified their country's original folk tales to define behaviour 'acceptable to the architects ' of the new Germany. Film 3: Satirical cartoonists vilified the national characteristics of the Welsh, the Scots and the Irish to build up the concept of pure Englishness.